rregnum.
Nay, if in the ardour of convivialism one did,--I merely hint at the
possibility of such an event,--if one did exceed the narrow limits of
strict ebriety, and open the heart with a ruby key, one had nothing to
dread from the cold, or, what is worse, the warm looks of ladies in the
drawing-room; no fear that an imprudent word, in the amatory fondness
of the fermented blood, might expose one to matrimony and settlements.
There was no tame, trite medium of propriety and suppressed confidence,
no bridge from board to bed, over which a false step (and your wine-cup
is a marvellous corrupter of ambulatory rectitude) might precipitate
into an irrecoverable abyss of perilous communication or unwholesome
truth. One's pillow became at once the legitimate and natural bourne
to "the overheated brain;" and the generous rashness of the coenatorial
reveller was not damped by untimeous caution or ignoble calculation.

But "we have changed all that now." Sobriety has become the successor
of suppers; the great ocean of moral encroachment has not left us one
little island of refuge. Miserable supper-lovers that we are, like the
native Indians of America, a scattered and daily disappearing race, we
wander among strange customs, and behold the innovating and invading
Dinner spread gradually over the very space of time in which the majesty
of Supper once reigned undisputed and supreme!

O, ye heavens, be kind,
And feel, thou earth, for this afflicted race.--WORDSWORTH.

As he was sitting down to the table, Clarence's notice was arrested by
a somewhat suspicious and unpleasing occurrence. The supper room was
on the ground floor, and, owing to the heat of the weather, one of the
windows, facing the small garden, was left open. Through this window
Clarence distinctly saw the face of a man look into the room for
one instant, with a prying and curious gaze, and then as instantly
disappear. As no one else seemed to remark this incident, and the
general attention was somewhat noisily engrossed by the subject
of conversation, Clarence thought it not worth while to mention a
circumstance for which the impertinence of any neighbouring servant or
drunken passer-by might easily account. An apprehension, however, of a
more unpleasant nature shot across him, as his eye fell upon the costly
plate which Talbot rather ostentatiously displayed, and then glanced to
the single and aged servant, who was, besides his master, the only male
inm